Staunton Travel Coverage

IT'S a ''crowded'' weekend in Staunton. Or so a downtown shopkeeper -- one of the few open for business on this springtime Sunday afternoon -- has just told me. It seems our visit coincides with a local high school's alumni shindig. I glance out at...

By WILMA DYKEMAN; Wilma Dykeman is a writer and lecturer whose novel entitled ''The Far Family'' is appearing in a new edition (Wakestone Books, Newport, Tenn.)

LEAD: Natives of Staunton, Va., hasten to tell you that the town's name is pronounced Stanton, after Lady Stanton, a royal governor's wife, and no one is quite sure how the ''u'' wandered in to the spelling to confuse generations of visitors....